Change a Tire on a Trail With No Shoulder

Changing a tire in a driveway is a ten minute job. On a shelf road with a camber, loose surface and no room to stand on the downhill side, it becomes the most dangerous thing most overlanders do. The difference is almost entirely in what you do before the vehicle leaves the ground.

How to do it

1. Get the vehicle somewhere you can work

   Driving a short distance on a flat ruins a tire but a ruined tire is cheaper than a rollover. Look for the widest, flattest, most solid ground within reach and take it, even if it means limping a hundred meters.

2. Chock hard and chock both directions

   Chock the wheel diagonally opposite the one coming off, in front and behind. On a slope use rocks as well. Park in gear or park, and set the handbrake.

3. Crack the lug nuts before you jack

   Full weight on the tire, breaker bar, quarter turn on each. Trying to break loose nuts with the wheel in the air spins the wheel or pushes the vehicle off the jack.

4. Build a jack base

   A factory jack sinks into sand, gravel and soft shoulder. Use a board, a MaxTrax, a flat rock or a purpose made base plate. Jacking on an unstable base is the moment vehicles come down on people.

5. Jack at the factory point and go only as high as needed

   Find the reinforced lift point in your manual, not a random bit of the frame or a control arm. Lift just enough to clear the tire, and never put any part of your body under the vehicle while it is on a jack.

6. Slide the flat under the frame as insurance

   Lay the removed wheel flat under the rocker or frame rail. If the jack fails, the vehicle lands on that instead of on the ground or on you.

7. Torque in a star pattern, then check again

   Snug in a star while the wheel is still lightly loaded, lower fully, then torque properly in the same pattern. Recheck after roughly fifty miles, because wheels do loosen after a change.

Where people go wrong

• Loosening lugs after jacking. The wheel just spins, or the vehicle shifts.
• Jacking on soft ground with no base. The single most common cause of the jack punching through or tipping.
• Reaching under a jacked vehicle. There is no task worth this.
• Carrying a spare you have never checked. A spare at half pressure is not a spare. Check it when you check the others.
• Forgetting to recheck torque. Loose wheels come off, and it usually happens within the first hour of driving.